The Hospital Marketing Quiz: Is Your Hospital Driving Maximum Profitability from Healthcare Marketing?

The truth in question: Is your hospital maximizing its marketing potential? 

Hospitals and hospital groups play a critical role in delivering high-quality healthcare to a broad patient base. Unlike smaller practices, hospitals often have larger budgets and more resources at their disposal, yet the complexity of hospital operations can make strategic marketing a challenge.

Effective marketing is not just an added benefit—it’s essential for maintaining a strong presence in the community, ensuring financial stability, and attracting a steady stream of new patients. With competition growing and patient expectations evolving, it’s more important than ever to refine your marketing strategies to focus on profitability.

To help you evaluate and enhance your marketing efforts, we’ve designed a comprehensive yet easy-to-follow hospital marketing quiz. This quiz will help you assess your current strategies, identify areas for improvement, and uncover opportunities to strengthen your hospital’s presence and patient acquisition efforts.

The self-scoring system is straightforward: award yourself points for each criterion you meet and discover how your marketing measures up. 

Let’s jump right to it:

The Hospital Marketing Quiz

Answer these 15 simple questions to learn where you stand in your hospital marketing endeavors. It only takes 5 minutes!

• 5 points: You run tailored marketing campaigns for each service line with specific goals and tracking.
• 3 points: You have general marketing campaigns that highlight various service lines without a specific focus.
• 1 point: You rarely focus on specific service lines in your marketing efforts.
• 0 points: You don’t differentiate marketing efforts for different service lines.

Here’s how to use hospital marketing campaigns to successfully promote all your service lines.

• 5 points: You use data-driven insights to target specific patient demographics for different service lines.
• 3 points: You use some data but mostly rely on general outreach for all services.
• 1 point: You occasionally target specific demographics but without a solid strategy.
• 0 points: You don’t target specific demographics at all.

Use predictive targeting in healthcare to successfully attract high-value patients for high-margin services: here’s how.

• 5 points: You regularly create and share educational content that addresses patient concerns and health topics.
• 3 points: You occasionally share educational content but it’s not a regular focus.
• 1 point: You rarely share educational content and mostly focus on promotional material.
• 0 points: You don’t share educational content at all.

Content is one of the pillars of a successful healthcare marketing strategy: here’s how to effectively produce and integrate it into your efforts.

• 5 points: You personalize your marketing messaging according to patient demographics, preferences, and service lines.
• 3 points: You use some personalization but it’s limited and not consistently applied.
• 1 point: Personalization is minimal and not a key part of your strategy.
• 0 points: You don’t use personalization in your marketing efforts.

Personalization is a powerful tool in attracting and retaining patients: here’s how to make it part of your patient retention strategy.

• 5 points: You have detailed patient journey maps and tailor your marketing strategy to each stage of the patient journey.
• 3 points: You have basic patient journey maps but they’re not fully integrated into your marketing.
• 1 point: You have a rough idea of patient journeys but no formal mapping.
• 0 points: You don’t map patient journeys at all.

Mapping out the patient journey will help you meet your patients at every step of the way: here’s how you can rely on the patient journey for better organic search outcomes.

• 5 points: Your hospital’s local listings are properly segmented for distinguished clinics and esteemed specialists and are fully optimized with accurate and complete information.
• 3 points: Your local listings are somewhat optimized but could use improvement.
• 1 point: Your local listings are incomplete or outdated.
• 0 points: You don’t optimize local listings at all.

Read this guide to optimizing your hospital’s local SEO to gain more visibility on search engines.

• 5 points: You actively request and manage online reviews across multiple platforms.
• 3 points: You request and manage reviews on a few platforms but not consistently.
• 1 point: You rarely request reviews and only respond occasionally.
• 0 points: You don’t request or manage online reviews.

Careful now: managing patient reviews can easily backfire if you don’t rely on established best practices. Here are the most common review management traps to avoid.

• 5 points: Your website is mobile-friendly, fast, and offers clear service descriptions and an excellent user experience.
• 3 points: Your website is mobile-friendly and features useful content but has some usability issues.
• 1 point: Your website is not mobile-friendly, lacks content, and has significant usability problems.
• 0 points: You don’t have a website.

Should you prioritize website redesign in your marketing strategy? Well, that depends—here are the factors to consider.

• 5 points: Your patient portal is highly functional, offering scheduling, records access, and communication features.
• 3 points: Your patient portal offers some features but is limited in functionality.
• 1 point: Your patient portal exists but is rarely used or promoted.
• 0 points: You don’t have a patient portal.

A functional patient portal is only one of many aspects crucial to patient retention for hospitals: see what else you can do to prevent small practices from ‘stealing’ your patients.

• 5 points: You regularly conduct automated patient surveys and use feedback to improve services.
• 3 points: You conduct surveys occasionally but don’t consistently act on feedback.
• 1 point: You rarely conduct patient surveys and rely on the old-fashioned pen and paper.
• 0 points: You don’t conduct patient surveys.

Automating patient surveys can significantly influence patient satisfaction and health outcomes: here’s why.

• 5 points: You have a dedicated in-house marketing team with specialized roles or a comprehensive retainer with a healthcare marketing agency.
• 3 points: You have a small marketing team but they juggle multiple responsibilities.
• 1 point: You have one or two people handling marketing among other tasks.
• 0 points: You don’t have a dedicated marketing team.

In financially challenging times, marketing is usually the first thing to go, and what a mistake that is! Here’s why investing in marketing is even more important during an economic downturn.

• 5 points: You use advanced, HIPAA-compliant healthcare marketing tools for automation, analytics, and campaign management.
• 3 points: You use some marketing tools but not to their full potential.
• 1 point: You use basic marketing tools with limited features.
• 0 points: You don’t use any marketing tools.

We crafted a list of modern marketing tools that’ll help you attract more patients through streamlined healthcare campaigns: take a look! 

• 5 points: Your marketing tools are fully integrated with your PM/EHR systems and used to their maximum potential.
• 3 points: Your marketing tools are partially integrated and used somewhat regularly.
• 1 point: Your marketing tools are used in isolation without any integrations.
• 0 points: You don’t integrate or fully use your tools.

Not all fabulous CRMs allow for full integration and customization in healthcare (you guessed it, due to HIPAA). Here’s how to choose software that won’t restrain you in healthcare marketing. 

• 5 points: You can accurately track the ROI of all your marketing activities.
• 3 points: You can track the ROI of some but not all of your marketing efforts.
• 1 point: You have a general idea of your hospital marketing ROI but no formal tracking or specific data.
• 0 points: You don’t track or know your ROI on marketing at all.

Speaking of healthcare marketing ROI, here’s how to effectively increase profitability in healthcare: read on and hone your strategy accordingly.

• 5 points: You track all marketing efforts and main KPIs in a HIPAA-compliant way.
• 3 points: You track some marketing efforts but not KPIs, you’re mostly focused on vanity metrics.
• 1 point: You track minimal marketing efforts: you know how many followers you have and what’s your average score on local listings.
• 0 points: You don’t track your marketing efforts at all.

Compliant tracking and reporting are of the essence for driving healthcare marketing profitability: here are the five most essential healthcare marketing metrics you should be diligently tracking. 

Did you score an A? Time to face the results of The Hospital Marketing Quiz.

Remember: whatever you learn, it’s for your own benefit. Let’s see how you did!

65-75 points: Congratulations, you excel in hospital marketing!

Your hospital is thriving in its marketing efforts. Great job! You’re effectively using a diverse array of marketing strategies and tools, which is essential for maintaining visibility and attracting new patients. We’re incredibly proud of your achievements!

45-64 points: Good job! Now let’s get to great.

Your foundation is solid, but there are opportunities to enhance your performance. Concentrate on improving the strategies where you scored lower to optimize your marketing efforts and achieve financially measurable results. You got this!

25-44 points: E for Effort? You must do better.

Although you have some marketing strategies in place, there is ample opportunity for growth. Focus on critical marketing activities and direct your efforts towards areas that need the most improvement to improve your overall marketing performance. Don’t forget to track it!

0-24 points: Hello and welcome toooo…2024!

It’s time to get serious. Your healthcare marketing strategy is in desperate need of improvement. Consider hiring professional marketing help to develop and implement a detailed marketing strategy that’ll elevate your hospital’s online presence and marketing effectiveness. 

Let’s Talk About Your Hospital’s Marketing Growth

If there’s one thing we learned over the years, it’s that there’s no ceiling in healthcare marketing. However you did today, there’s always room to improve and scale your hospital’s marketing efforts even further to improve your ROI and enhance effectiveness. (No need to panic, but if you scored less than 45 points—pick up that phone and give us a call now!)

SocialClimb’s comprehensive healthcare marketing platform provides a robust array of HIPAA-compliant tools designed to centralize, automate, and streamline your marketing efforts. With SocialClimb, you can efficiently track your activities, measure key performance indicators, and generate comprehensive reports—all from one convenient location. 

What sets SocialClimb apart is its exclusive HIPAA-compliant predictive targeting feature, a game-changer for providers integrating it into their strategy.

Ready to elevate your hospital’s marketing? Reach us today!